I felt about Kuwait the same way I felt when I heard about break-ins or robberies—it wasn’t right.
I wasn’t surprised when I heard that America’s President Bush was getting together a coalition to free the annexed country. It wasn’t hard to figure out what would happen—Iraq would lose. I remember having many conversations with friends in the army. A surprising number thought that Iraq would defeat the United States and other coalition members because our religion was better and that God would inevitably be on our side.
“It’s not about religion,” I told them. “It’s about technology. And we have no right to be in that country.”
Of course, I could only have such conversations with people I truly trusted. Talking about the war—or saying anything that could be interpreted as criticism of Saddam—would have been suicidal. At best I would have ended up in jail.
I came back from Mosul and rejoined my anti-aircraft unit, waiting for the inevitable. It took several months for the Western nations to organize and group for an attack. The fall passed into winter. The conflict didn’t seem real. There were negotiations, deadlines—nothing that remotely affected me and my tiny anti-aircraft installation deep in northern Iraq.
Finally, on January 17, 1991, the air war began. The Americans and their allies took out key Iraqi air force installations in the first few hours of the campaign—we weren’t touched, which gives you some idea of how important we were. In fact, the war remained distant until U.S. bombers blew out a bridge in Mosul and I heard about the attack from friends and family. Shortly afterward, I saw a division of Iraqi army soldiers walking up from Baghdad. It was a strange sight, thousands of men walking along the road.
To this day, I have no idea what they were doing. Retreating from a nonexistent (at that point) enemy? Heading north to reinforce the border with Turkey? Mobilizing to the Kurdish area to prevent a rebellion? Whatever it was, they were in no hurry to get where they were going.
Power went out in much of the country, including Baiji. The city was home to an oil refinery, and eventually the plant was targeted by the allies as they attempted to cut supplies of fuel to the Iraqi military. Our anti-aircraft battery was attacked by one or more allied planes. I’m not sure whether they were British or American, though from what I remember I think the aircraft was a Tornado, which was flown by Britain’s Royal Air Force as well as the Italians and Saudis. In any event, the plane was too far for me to get a positive identification myself, and frankly I had good reason to stay in our bunker: the aircraft dropped cluster bombs on us.
I am happy to report that we didn’t fire at them, and there were no casualties on the ground. None as the result of the bombing, that is. There was one loss due to stupidity. Which, in war, is more dangerous than explosives.
After the attack, we found an unexploded cluster bomb lying on the ground near one of the batteries. One of our officers approached the bomb and for some unknown reason drew his pistol and fired. He was a good enough shot to hit the bomb—which then exploded, killing him.
What is the American saying? You can’t fix stupid?
The officer’s idiocy was typical not just of our leadership, but of the army in general. The last thing Saddam wanted was an army that was so highly trained and capable that it might challenge him. Dumb officers who were loyal were preferable to smart officers who might want to be dictator themselves someday. We’d been at war for years with Iran, yet our leaders didn’t know that much about advanced Western weapons. They had no idea of the firepower Americans possessed.
Nor did they understand America. The coalition allies used strategies that they hoped would limit civilian casualties and collateral damage. From the Iraqi point of view, these limited attacks seemed like the sum total of American capabilities. It was hard for our leaders to understand that the allies were pulling their punches. That made no sense to them.
Our guns, useless as they were, remained intact. But the raid on the refinery was successful enough to put the plant out of operation for the duration of the war. It was a scene repeated over and over again in Iraq, as the Americans and their allies overwhelmed pitifully antiquated defenses and poorly trained men. The coalition made quick work of the Iraqi army in Kuwait. The route used to retreat became known as the Highway of Death, as our escaping troops were easy targets for allied planes. Frontline Iraqi units that didn’t surrender were destroyed as the coalition executed what became known following the war as the “left hook,” sweeping into Iraq and cutting off the south with an attack from the western desert along the Saudi border.
Sometimes I think it would have been better if the Americans had kept up their attack, gone on to Baghdad and chased Saddam from power. But if they’d made the attack without much of a plan for what to do afterward—as they did in 2003—the end result would have been chaos and eventual bloodshed among Iraqis. The misery would have been the same, just sooner.
As soon as the coalition ended its attack, the cities in southern Iraq began rebelling against the dictator. Iran helped both encourage the rebellion and then support the people who were trying to take over. But as soon as he knew that the Americans wouldn’t attack him in Baghdad, Saddam pushed what was left of his forces south to end the rebellions. The rebellions were quickly crushed.
My unit stayed put. There wasn’t too much call for anti-aircraft guns to fight poorly armed civilians.
I don’t know what I would have done had I been ordered to join an attack. I hope I would have been brave and done the right thing: not harmed innocent civilians. But at that time, it’s very likely I would have followed orders.
Thank God I was never faced with that situation.
The people couldn’t do anything about the dictator. I’m sure a lot of Iraqis farther north wanted to be rid of Saddam, too. He had brought terrible times to the country. But he still had much power. Though defeated, the army remained loyal to him. The Fedayeen Saddam—a special paramilitary group aligned with the Ba’ath Party and loyal to Saddam personally—enforced discipline. (Fedayeen means, roughly, “man who sacrifices”; in theory these thugs were supposed to sacrifice their lives for Saddam. In reality, they generally sacrificed others for their own benefit.) The Ba’ath Party was the only viable political organization in the country. Saddam had everyone’s arm, everyone’s leg, tied to his.
It was not simply a matter of threats or violence. Saddam’s dictatorship was the only thing the people had ever known. For many, imagining an Iraq free from him was unimaginable.
Except in the south, where there had been a lot of destruction, things quickly returned to normal. Within a few weeks, life was about the same as it had been before the invasion.
Don’t take that to mean things were perfect, or even good. Prices had been climbing slowly before the war. They continued to do that after the conflict. It was a classic situation of supply and demand. With less and less available, things became more precious. The price of beef escalated from roughly fifteen hundred dinar (between two and three dollars at the time) a kilo to twelve thousand dinar. Anything that had to be imported became very expensive. Gasoline, regulated by the state and refined in Iraq, was an exception, but even things like electricity increased greatly in price.
This didn’t happen overnight. Things got worse gradually, then accelerated as the United Nations clamped down because Saddam didn’t comply with its stipulations following the war. UN sanctions squeezed imports and made it difficult to export anything. Little by little, jobs began to disappear. Each day, things got a little worse. You didn’t notice it until you thought back to the previous month.
The electrical shortages became worse and worse. Power was cut for two hours each day in Mosul. Then, after some time passed, three hours, then four. Finally, power might be cut for ten or twelve hours, turned on for two, then cut off for another long stretch.
Why didn’t Saddam comply with the UN? Why did he let the sanctions get worse and the economy shrivel?
In retrospect, it seems ridiculous.
He had to know that the Americans were not fooling around. And he had no serious nuclear program; even if he had, it would have been a foolish waste of money and resources.
I can’t read the mind of a crazed dictator. I can only make guesses.
I think perhaps he didn’t want the rest of the world to know that he’d been bluffing about weapons of mass destruction. I think he thought if other nations—Iran in particular—found that out, we would be attacked. Or that people in Iraq would rise up against him.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with protecting either himself or the country. Maybe it was more his pride. Pretending to have weapons meant he could pretend to be strong. If others thought he was strong, then in his mind maybe he was strong.
But the reality was that he and Iraq were really very weak. Defying the UN was foolish. It hurt only Iraqis—and ultimately led to Saddam’s downfall.
But it took a few years for things to get desperately bad. We were sliding down the hill but didn’t really know it.
THE GULF WAR ended in February 1991. My military service finished a few months later. I was released from the army and returned to Mosul, where my sister’s husband gave me a job in his construction business operating heavy machinery—bulldozers, earthmovers, and my favorite of all, graders.
Construction may not be a glamorous job, but to me there’s something important in building things, whether they’re roads or skyscrapers. Creating is a critical human activity. It’s being positive; it’s doing something. It’s the opposite of war, where the goal is to tear things down.
I wasn’t particularly philosophical as I worked. I wanted to make a living. I wanted to earn money and have a good life, one where I fulfilled my dreams.
Those dreams had been modified by reality. Lessened. I wouldn’t be king. But I was going to be successful. Maybe not rich, but well off, with enough money to have a nice house, nice cars, and a nice family.
And I definitely had someone in mind to start that family with.
SOHEILA AND I HAD kept in touch while I was in the army. Now I saw my chance to spend more time with her—and to make her my wife. I told her I would do anything and everything to convince her mother to let her marry me.
But now there was competition, serious competition. A cousin of hers had a very important job in the government and had been nominated to be a high-ranking minister in Saddam’s government. He was single, and needed a pretty wife in order to hold that position with respect.
Even though he was the same age as Soheila’s mother, he told the family that he wanted to marry Soheila.
“I’m very important now,” he told Soheila’s mom. “I will let Soheila live an amazing life with my money . . .”
Blah-blah-blah. You can imagine the things he said. Not that they were lies: I am sure that he was sincere, and would have given Soheila many things.
Except true love.
Soheila’s mother agreed to let him marry her. When I heard, I went wild. Angry? I was beyond angry. Fury doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.
But I was calm, too. I was not going to be beaten in this.
I gathered up some friends and relatives and went to pay Soheila’s family a visit. As Soheila remembers it, a few of us had had something to drink before we came over. She also remembers that I had a pistol.
My memory is vague on both counts.
“Hey,” I told her mother as soon as I saw her outside the house. “I will marry Soheila. No one can touch her. I am her cousin.”
(The claim about our being cousins may sound strange to Americans. In Iraqi culture, cousins have what might be called the right of first refusal—they can say that they have the right to marry a girl and no one else can object.)
Technically, I was not her cousin. Our families were close, and at times the women used words like aunt and cousin to signify this. But there was no actual blood relation, and my claiming there was wouldn’t make it so.
But all is fair in love and war, yes? I may not have fought in the war that had just passed, but this was an entirely different matter.
“I’m her cousin, and I will marry her!”
“You are not her cousin!” her mother screamed back. “You don’t have that right.”
“I am!” I insisted. “I have this right, and no one else will marry her but me. If anyone gets close to Soheila or tries to take her, I will kill them. She is mine. Nobody can take her.”
By now, I had created quite a scene, both inside and outside the house. Neighbors came over and tried to calm me down. Even my own friends were concerned. I stayed for five hours, arguing my case and letting other people do so. Finally no one had any energy left even to talk. I went home, still determined that I was going to win.
Soheila’s cousin heard what had happened and soon changed his mind about wanting to marry her. But Soheila’s mother was still reluctant to give Soheila permission to marry me.
I kept working on Soheila. It was clear that she loved me—she was writing me love poems regularly. The words went straight from her pen to my heart, kisses that could penetrate all the way to my soul. Our love burned so deeply that every day I could not be with her was like living in hell.
One day, I convinced the brother-in-law I worked for to speak to the family for me. He and some of his friends went to Soheila’s house and spoke to her mother, trying to convince her that we loved each other and should be allowed to marry.
He was a respected man, well off and influential, but even his pleas didn’t move her.
A short time later, Soheila came down with a mysterious illness that kept her in bed for days. Maybe it was the flu; she certainly had all the symptoms. But as Soheila tells the story, it was something else: lovesickness. According to her version, her mother’s refusal to let us marry had caused her illness.
I think I like her version best.
Whatever the cause of her fever, her mother’s sister found her in bed one day and had a long talk with her. Soheila poured out her heart, confessing her deep love for me—which by then was no secret to her aunt.
“I will talk to your mother,” her aunt said finally. “You are getting married. And in the meantime, you will get better.”
Soheila’s aunt and some of her cousins went to her mother. They succeeded where I and an army of my friends had not: her mother finally gave in and gave her approval for us to wed.
It wasn’t the heartiest endorsement: “If it is her choice, I will not block it.”
She added that if Soheila changed her mind, that would be fine with her. But that was all we needed. I knew Soheila wouldn’t change her mind, and I wouldn’t either.
Soheila also had to get the approval from her father, who was down in Basra. That was easy—he told her he only wanted her to be happy, and it didn’t take much for him to see what I meant to her.
We were married in the summer of 1993: August 2, to be exact.
It seemed like we had waited forever, though in Iraq and certainly at that time, a wait of several years was not considered unusual. Our ceremony was traditional and stretched over two days—and then further with our honeymoon.
Traditional Iraqi engagements and weddings consist of several different parts. The first is the Mashaya, where customarily the leader of the groom’s family goes to the bride’s family and discusses things such as what presents will be given to the bride and her family, and what sort of prospects the groom and his family have. This is done completely among the men; our society is extremely male oriented. Assuming that all find the match satisfactory, there are special drinks and rounds of celebration. The day before the ceremony, the bride’s family holds an elaborate party known as Nishan. Tradition calls for the bride to change her dress seven times, with each color she wears signifying something different, from innocence to sophistication, from happiness to mystery.
The actual ceremony is even more elaborate. There is a section where the imam questions the bride about whether she really wants to marry the man. This can be somewhat humorous, as
the bride has the option of extending the process as long as she wants—though it’s a bad sign if it goes on too long.
Fortunately, Soheila took pity on me and did not drag this part out.
I’d saved up money from my job to pay for as much food and drink as I could. I bought Soheila many presents—jewelry, clothes, furniture. We rented two large halls and had two different parties: one for men and one for women. Some Iraqi families follow the strict tradition of separation of the genders, and we had to accommodate them and make them feel welcome. Hospitality is important to Iraqis in general, and certainly to me. I want my guests always to feel like they are my guests, honored, and having a good time. If you are in my house, you are the king. There is nothing I cannot do for you.
The halls were quite a distance from each other. Following Iraqi tradition, Soheila stayed with the women and I stayed with the men.
That night—it was probably the next day by then—many of our friends took their cars and escorted us to a tourist spot in the northwestern part of the country, complete with a lake and a private villa. This wasn’t a small procession; Soheila counted thirty-five cars in the line behind us. But they left soon after our arrival: just like Americans, Iraqis like to start their married lives with private time, so they can get to know each other.
Soheila and I got to know each other many times in those three days. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. And then it was back to reality.
WHEN WE RETURNED to Mosul, we went to live with my mother and two brothers, one of whom was married and had two children. It was a medium-sized house by our standards, with six rooms. Soheila and I took one of the rooms downstairs, which gave us a little privacy.
By this time, the country was straining. It was difficult to make a living, and even harder to dream. With both my brother and myself working, our family was one of the luckier ones, able to depend on each other and pull together. Many Iraqis were poorer, without skills or the cleverness one needs to survive in hard times.
My older brother, Hamid, was a car mechanic, and while his work often didn’t pay much, he was generally employed. I continued working for my brother-in-law, though we started to have small squabbles and conflicts. His business was starting to dry up, though by comparison with others he was still doing well.
Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs Page 4